"I've always liked it myself," he agreed with a smile. Stretching an arm around me, he kissed my temple. "I might have guessed my kitten would find it and fit herself right into it. Ah, see? The heaven star is out tonight."
He pointed at a brilliant, shimmering star in the eastern sky. It shone pure and bright as a diamond catching the sun, and a faint corona of violet and pink and blue tinted the edges of its light.
"That's amazing!" I brought a hand to my mouth. "I've never seen such a gorgeous star before."
"Here at sea, it seems like the sky is always changing, and yet always constant and true, as it guides ships to shore."
I twined my fingers in the web of ratlines suspending us. The gentle sea breeze brought the scent of fresh salt and brine, and as it sifted through my hair it sent a gentle tingle across my scalp.
"Are you angry with me, Sadira?"
I gave a start, causing the ropes to shake. "Angry? No, Sir—"
"You have sworn always to be truthful with me. If you choose to break your oath, I suppose I can't stop you. But if I find out later you haven't been honest, I'll have to punish you severely. I want no lies between us."
My stomach rolled. His hand found mine and gave it a tight squeeze.
"Sadira. Please. Tell me if you are angry."
Why not demand it? I shouted inside my head. Why not seize me by the wrists and hold me down, wring the truth out of me? You are my Master!
I slipped my hand from his and rolled onto my side, facing away from him.
"You should believe me," I told him. "And what Ailsa said today while we trained... she thinks I can't be trusted to know my own mind, because I remain a submissive by choice. I told you, Bannon, I won't have you—have anyone—assume I am damaged. I told you—"
"You told me you feared you would fall to pieces," he interjected. "You crave subjugation because you need someone to implement control. Now you're finding ghosts in the ship's lower decks and stumbling upon mysterious lost cargo holds. Is there no chance Ailsa is right, and these are all nightmares brought on from Khan's torture?"
"No!" I snapped. "I am not insane!"
"Not insane. Distressed."
"I am not distressed, either!"
"Sadira." His voice dropped to a low, serious note. "Think of what happened when I bound you in the forge."
As if he'd burned me, my whole body tightened, and I clenched my fists around the ropes.
Bannon slid closer and wrapped his arms around me.
"Why won't you believe me?" I sighed.
"Ah, my kitten." He sighed. "I only want you to find peace. Peace with what happened to you... peace with whatever is troubling you now. I don't disbelieve you. I know that these things are real, in some way. But I don't think you're being haunted by anything but your own past horrors. You are so convinced it is dark magic, you miss the simple, mundane possibilities. Sleepwalking. Night terrors. Stains on your fingers left by paint or oils freshly applied to the wood by the crew."
I squeezed my eyes shut. "Please don't think I am broken, Bannon. I can't stand it."
He said nothing, but he gave me a long and tender squeeze, and kissed the top of my head. That was almost worse.
I lay in his arms for a long time, fighting the whirling storm of emotion within. Flashing anger like lightning; lonely yellow sorrow, so in need of touch and security. This is what it is like, I wanted to tell him. This is the chaos within me that needs to be tempered. Needs to be constrained. Needs direction.
I am a beast. Perhaps that is not so bad. Perhaps a beast is not a monster, after all. But a beast left loose to rampage really is mad. It needs a strong hand to make it docile and give it peace.
I stared out into the eastern sky, and the faintly violet halo of light surrounding what he called the heaven star.
Somewhere on the deck, voices called back and forth. I shifted to peek over my shoulder at Bannon, frowning.
"Do you smell—"
His eyes widened in alarm. "Smoke!"
We rolled over in our hammock to search the ship below. Horror hit me right in the stomach: clouds of smoke rose from the gangways down into the lower levels near the stern. Sailors sounded the alarm back and forth, and in teams they seized water barrels to pass along a brigade line.
"It's on our side of the ship!" I grabbed the ratlines to pull myself up. "Schala's in our cabin!"
Bannon braced himself in the ropes as they swayed under my movement, then followed me down to the bow. I moved faster, though, panic blooming in my chest—I couldn't shake the terrible image from my mind of the helpless caracal, cowering alone and afraid as fire devoured the wooden ship around her.
My feet hit the deck and I raced for the stern. Behind me, Bannon called out, but his words were lost in my frantic haste. One of the sailors in the brigade line called out to me, throwing a leather waterskin to me, and I caught it and slung it over my shoulder without stopping.
Fire response was something Ashe and the crew drilled into us almost daily. Of all the dangers at sea, flames might be the worst. If they spread too far, they could cripple a ship at sea, even a ship as big and as well-equipped as the Drekakona.
I reached the stairway and plunged into the dim interior. The smoke hovered in the air above me, acrid and somehow verdant, weedy, as though at its heart burned rich green creepers and vines rather than treated cedar and oak.
Down here the shouts came louder, and bodies plunged through the corridors at disastrous speed. The haze made it nearly impossible to see anyone. I managed to duck out of the way of a pair of cabin boys thanks only to the thump of their bare feet on the boards before they barreled out of the din.
Why don't I see any firelight? Are the flames below? Where is the galley from here?
The galley was on the second deck, but on the opposite side of the ship. The fire had broken out somewhere nearby, though, I was sure. The thickest smoke was stuck here.
There is light. But...
Blue light.
Blue fire, flickering somewhere ahead. Not dying this time. Growing. Feeding. Destroying the Dragon Maiden from within.
A crack and snap from the beams overhead gave me a split-second's warning. I jumped back a step just as they collapsed before me. Azure sparks and a cloud of ash flew up around me, making me cough. I uncorked the waterskin and sprayed about half on the glittering sapphire flames, reducing them just enough to make a strong leap over them.
Schala. Don't be afraid. I'm coming.
More and more flame surrounded me as I dashed for our cabin. The fire must have sparked from somewhere in the officer's cabins or the crew's barracks below.
Why blue, though? Someone's pipe, full of exotic flowers?
I didn't think so.
At last, I came to our door. Propping the water skin on my hip, ready to pour, I lifted one foot and kicked at the dark wood. It swung open easily, and I stormed into the room.
The head of the bed had caught fire, and the exterior wall had picked up the sapphire sheen thin flames. My eyes fell on the trunk at the foot of the bed, containing the only things I'd brought with me from Vashtaren. Those possessions weren't the reason I'd dashed down here, though; whirling in place, I searched for my caracal.
"Schala!"
I heard her low, miserable cry, but she was nowhere to be seen. I coughed harder, dizzy from the smoke.
"Scha—"
A pair of strong arms looped around my middle and pulled me from the room. I struggled against them until Bannon's rough voice in my ear commanded me, "No, kitten! You'll burn!"
"But the cat!" I rasped, even as I relaxed. "She's helpless, we can't abandon her to—"
"Not at the cost of your life!" he shouted.
Real rage flared in me. "She needs me!"
I wrenched from his grip and plunged past the growing blue flames climbing the doorjamb. His fingers nearly closed around my wrist, but a knot in one of the planks burst suddenly, sending up scorching cinders between us. Before he could follow me, the
lintel gave way, crashing down across the doorway and blocking him.
I lifted my arm up to cover my nose and mouth as I searched the room once more. Where was she?
The fire snarled and snapped. It danced along the walls in undulating waves, and as I turned in place it seemed to me like serpent's coils. Rolling and winding, surrounding me, as I had always imagined Alaric's vile god surrounding me, closing in on me. It didn't frighten me, though. No... it infuriated me. In the flickering, shimmering flames I could almost make out its angular, snakish head and bright, blazing eyes, as if it would leap out to strike me.
"Come on, then!" I challenged. "Whatever you are, clinging to me like shed skin, come on out and get me! I'm not afraid of you!"
To my shock, the flames shifted. My hammering heart nearly came to a stop as what I had vaguely imagined as the head of a great viper moved. The amalgamation of blue flames swelled, and it wasn't a winding asp clinging and weaving around the room—but the shrouded, moony-eyed silhouette following me from the shadows. Its shining eyes, white as the heaven star, turned to me like beacons, and staring into them I felt all the strength run out of me.
I fell to my knees, empty of all strength, but my anger remained.
"Leave me, monster!" I screamed. "I will not be your prisoner! I will never be anyone's prisoner again!"
The shape vanished, leaving only the flicker and dance of wild azure flames. Before I could duck aside, a rolling wave of fire came rushing at me.
"Get down!"
Bannon shoved me flat on my stomach. The heat of the fire stung my back but left me untouched. My barbarian let out a strangled cry above me, and as I rolled to look up and see him, my mouth dropped open.
"No, no, Bannon..."
His upraised arm had taken most of the burn, but blisters rose along the left side of his brow, down to his ear. He scowled at me, and before I could resist, he seized me around the waist, hoisting me over his shoulder and hauling me into the corridor.
"I told you to stay put!" he snapped, setting me down. The passageway's interior wall had been soaked down and he pinned me against it, giving me nowhere to run. I stared up at his scorched, reddened skin, lifting my fingers to it without quite daring to touch.
"Bannon... oh, my barbarian..."
Behind us, the brigade line had reached our cabin and flung heavy buckets of water over the burning entrance. A heartrending moan of a caracal reached my ears, and pain shot through my heart.
"Schala?"
I peered past my poor, injured barbarian, terrified of what might have become of the little creature, whom I'd left alone in the room. Had I allowed them both to be hurt? Would they both now bear the scars of my choices?
The brigade line had made it into our cabin now, and I'd lost sight of the man in the lead. The splash of water and hiss of steam filled the room, and bubbling black clouds melted into gray, thinning tendrils of smoke.
Schala's unhappy miaow sounded overhead. I looked up to find her—blessedly unharmed—moving swiftly along a beam above us. The fur along her back spiked up in fear, and her brilliant green eyes were wide with animal panic. Seeing her safe brought a rush of tears to my eyes, and I reached out my arms for her. She dropped down into them with a sad groan.
I buried my face in her fur, crying. "I'm sorry, Bannon... I couldn't leave her. I couldn't let her be caught in that, not alone."
Bannon let out a low, angry snort. When I looked again into his face, and the ugly burn there, my tears turned into sobs. I leaned into his chest, cradling Schala between us.
"Please forgive me. I just..."
To my relief, he lowered his arms, wrapping both of us in an embrace.
"And how do you think I'd have managed, if you'd been hurt?" he muttered. Anger still seethed in him, lacing his dark tone, but he kept his voice calm and even. "Did you not think of what it would mean to me, to lose you?"
I wiped away tears and didn't answer. I hadn't. The life of an innocent caracal had seemed to me as priceless as any wealth or valuables I could have taken from my former master's great treasuries. Schala had never done wrong by anyone, had never betrayed anyone or misled them. She was a pure and irreplaceable soul, and I could never leave her to such a horrible fate as burning alive. Me, though?
I would not have burned. I know it. I am fast, and I am smart. The strange intelligence behind those flames—that monstrous creature—I could fight it.
I could... stop it.
"I was all right," I tried to assure him.
"No." As he crushed me to him, his fingers dug into my back. His voice was hoarse, thick. "Sadi, don't you know how it would break me to lose you?"
A terrible pain rose in my chest. A fist tightening around my heart; a spike of guilt sinking deep into my lungs.
"I'm sorry," I said again. The hazy remnants of the smoke choked me, and I fell into a rough coughing fit.
The smells of wet, scorched wood and muddy ash surrounded us. Up and down the corridor, sailors called all clear. The last of the fire had been extinguished.
But the damage was done. The Drekakona could not sail on.
Chapter Sixteen
The fire left portions of the Drekakona's outer hull broken and exposed on the starboard side, and several quarters on the middle deck and second deck were uninhabitable until repairs could be made. Torv and Arne assessed the worst of the damage and determined even a few of the internal support beams would have to be replaced.
We could limp along—carefully—with the strength of the rowers, but only until we found a safe place to make port. Foul weather or choppy seas could be devastating now, and it might be weeks before we could take to the wide-open sea again. Of course, Torv assured us, it could have been far worse.
"Could've sunk us outright," he told a group of us over a breakfast of pork and eggs the next morning. "Could've taken the whole stern up in a conflagration or caught the sails. As far as shipboard blazes go, I'll be glad to lose a few officer's cabins and a storage hold of rice and hay, rather than half the ship."
None of the crew had been lost, either, though there'd been more than a few burns. Ailsa and the ship's surgeon had spent the whole night with members of the brigade line, managing salves, painkillers, and careful bandaging. When Ailsa missed the breakfast bell, I volunteered to take a tray of food to the physician's quarters for her. The sailors and soldiers there had started digging into their supplies of wine and mead for comfort. Flasks were passed back and forth while Ailsa packed away the remaining contents of her medicine stores.
"All in all, Torv is right," she told me. "Fires onboard can be true disasters. We're damn lucky."
Bannon's burns would heal, she promised. As I handed over her food, she slipped a familiar tin of salve into my hand, she added, "I'm sure you can tend to them just as easily as I."
Her gesture of trust overwhelmed me. I left the surgeon's quarters speechless, cradling the medicine in both hands, a mixture of guilt and pride teeming in my chest. Bannon wouldn't be burned at all if I hadn't defied him. Ailsa didn't know that, though, and she'd given me responsibility over his care.
Though the trunk containing our belongings emerged intact, the fire had left our cabin uninhabitable, one of the most seriously damaged and exposed to the open air. Bannon and I had been moved to a temporary lodging in one of the crew's quarters, normally shared among four of Arne's sailors. The sailors cleared out and found other arrangements, perhaps unwilling to intrude on the Red Bear and his concubine.
I thought for certain Bannon would banish me from his bed. I'd defied him in a spectacular manner, and worse, he'd been injured because of it. Surely, I'd be assigned a place among the regular crew, forbidden from his intimate company for days. Maybe weeks.
Maybe for good.
As punishment he assigned me three days of celibacy. Three days forbidden to serve him, even to touch him. Denied physical connection.
He might as well have cast me out, I sulked as the command was handed down. I hate celibacy.
>
"You must understand what it would mean to me, if I lost you," he explained, extinguishing my resentment on the spot. "You might have left me forever when you ran into that fire. Left me without the smell of your hair. The touch of your skin. The taste of your mouth. I need for you to experience that grief in some small way. I want your skin to feel the absence of mine. I need you to know my pain."
He gave me low, menial tasks: cleaning away the ash and debris from the fire; scrubbing the filthy, soot-stained corners and cracks on hands and knees; hauling materials for the shipwrights as they cleared away the wreckage and prepared the area for repair. No one was to help me. He refused to allow even Schala to accompany me during my work times, confining the cat to the bunkroom or the lower cargo holds, where she could do her own job of catching vermin.
In the last hours of my second day of punishment, though, as I scratched and plucked at a charred, stinking mess of a burnt resin cask, Bannon surprised me. He cornered me in the supply hold and pinned me up against a cluster of barrels, greedily seizing my clothing and tearing it from me.
"See how you rule me?" he rasped between harsh kisses, fingers digging into the soft curves of my buttocks as he lifted me from my feet. "I can't even abide by my own rules. I can't stand the thought of not touching you, not holding you, Sadira. Don't you ever, ever leave me like that again!"
We made rough love, clumsy and desperate and beautiful. And I apologized, over and over, tears streaming down my face as we found our climax together.
Three days after the fire, we made port in a sandy bay surrounded by chalky white hills. A crowded village of squat, square domiciles and red clay roofs climbed rocky embankments, and tall palm trees swayed in the winds, heavy with a reddish fruit I didn't recognize.
"It's not one of our normal supply ports," Ashe confided to me and Rayyan as we helped prepare the rigging lines and the anchors. "Captain might be familiar, and probably some of the old salts like Torv, but I've never been here myself."
Beauty's Secret (Beast and Beauty Book 2) Page 13